22

Mr. FULLER. This is of course you are saying now that it is H.R.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. It is a poor bill.

Mr. FULLER. Has guidelines you do not like.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Very definitely. I hope I have given that impression.

Mr. BAILEY. May I, at this point, ask the witness a question?

You have mentioned you are opposed to some of the provisions of Public Law 864, the Defense Act of 1958. We will not have time to discuss that today because it will take some time. Will you be available to come back up to this committee meeting?

Mr. FULLER. Yes. When would you want me?

Mr. BAILEY. I am not positive right now as to when we might call you back. But we are planning having a joint meeting of my committee, that is this committee, which would include activities concerning the elementary and secondary schools, with Mr. Elliott's committee. I assume you were objecting to some of those Federal controls set up

Mr. FULLER. I would welcome the opportunity.

Mr. BAILEY. In the field beyond the high school. So maybe it would be better if we convene the two subcommittees and go into those before we decide whether we are going to amend it or leave the bill stand as it is.

Mr. FULLER. I am at your service to do that. I would like to illustrate some of the things that we think do not work as they should in connection with this National Defense Education Act of 1958.

Mr. BAILEY. We have Monday, next, open on the schedule. I take it I will not have very many members of the subcommittee here on Monday.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mr. Chairman, if we had a few minutes we might get a few comments from Dr. Fuller about his apprehensions about the National Defense Education Act.

I am very curious just why it is that you feel there are lessons we can learn and those lessons seems to indicate unless we have Federal assistance with a blank check attached we better not have it at all.

Mr. FULLER. I do not think it is fair to say H. R. 22, amended, is a blank check.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. It says the State has to report whether it spent the money for construction of schools or paying teachers' salaries, but I do not see that is of any value. What point is there in a provision like that? Why not say it is spent on education purposes? Why not say, "Did you spend it?" If they could save it and store it up for a rainy day it might be as wise a use of the Federal dollar as we could expect, in fact wiser than some of the ways we spend money.

Mr. FULLER. I would not say that the last statement is not true. There are some ways the Federal funds are spent that are not wise, but I do believe that the example set by the Second Morrell Act of 1890 shows that Federal funds assigned in large categories for expenditure by the States or land-grant colleges specifically are expended and have been expended as well and more economically than those which have been put out in little tiny bits with all kinds of Federal control circulating around them.

I can tell you right now that there is a great deal of discomfort and a great deal of frustration and a great deal of difficulty in hiring

personnel and all the rest in placing some titles of the National Defense Education Act in effect in the States. It is a far more difficult job. Several have said in regard to certain titles in negotiating State plans that they would rather not have it at all than they have it the way they were told they would have to have it. And then there has been cooperation. We have had the utmost cooperation and wonderful support from Commissioner Derthick, Mr. Richardson, Mr. Flemming, and Mr. Derthick's staff. There is nothing personal about this. We think that they are doing their job as well as any group of administrators could do the job. But at the same time the very type of the law, the character of the law, leads to so much redtape you wonder if it is worth it. It takes so much expense, so much paper work, so much communication, so much overwork, week after week after week of trying to get something into operation, when if the State had it without all these controls on it they would have had it in operation months ago and it would be more efficiently operated from that point out.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. My children like to get the weekly allowance more than they do the money they have to work for. I still think we have a responsibility to set up a program which would make a certain amount of effort a requirement on the part of the State and local level of government.

That does not worry me at all, the fact that the States in some cases are not set up to handle these problems; and guidance and counsel, for instance, is a very good thing. The Federal program will stimulate them to do what they should have done without the prodding on the part of the Federal Government. Just hand it over and say, "Use it for whatever purposes advisable" strikes me as a waste of the taxpayers' money.

Mr. FULLER. If you use it for teacher salaries and construction you are covering 85 percent of the total school cost.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. If you put $5 billion a year into it you probably will be putting it where it is going to be of value to the recipients. Mr. FULLER. Very much.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I still think it does not follow to have a $4 or $5 billion program with as you say no controls at all.

Mr. LAFORE. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FULLER. Let me read about the central view and this comes from where your nephew, Mr. Chairman, is the Associate Commissioner of Education, from New York. You might check with your nephew on this.

Mr. BAILEY. You are reading Mr. Allen's letter?

Mr. FULLER. I am reading Jim Allen's letter, the Commissioner of New York and this is a very moderate, middle of the road statement. I have another one alongside here that is not quite so moderate. It says: "Dear Larry"—this is the Commissioner of Education whom we admire very much.

We feel that we are making progress in the administration of the provisions of the act but I must say that I have my reservations about the pattern that this act may set in terms of future Federal-State relationships in education. My colleagues in the New York State Education Department have been somewhat overwhelmed with the mass of specifications, regulations and detail connected with the preparation and approval of our State plans. We have had marvelous cooperation and assistance from you and your colleagues in the United

States Office of Education. Nevertheless we wonder whether the provisions of the act itself and the volume of regulations issued in connection with its administration are not tending to establish a type of Federal control which was the very thing all of us, including Congress, hoped to avoid.

That is a moderate statement that would represent just about the middle of the road opinion of 49 chief State school officers.

Mr. LAFORE. Is it not true that with the advent of any new act that its execution is very difficult and cumbersome and troublesome until they have had experience?

Mr. FULLER. This is one that is going to require greater increased personnel permanently at all levels of school government. And it is one that will not shake down fast. We have had experience, of course. Now, we had vocational education for less than college grade for 42 years. We had some difficulties with it all those years and it has shaken down now to the point where it is more an inherent part of education than it ever was before.

I mentioned in the school lunch program 22 States are auditing at the local level now, which is the policy I am glad to see of the Department of Agriculture as well as the State agencies for education. So they do shake down as you say. They do become more settled in administration but this act is a 4-year law and if we are settled down by the third year I will think that we are fortunate the way things are now.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You are not suggesting we terminate it, I do not suppose?

Mr. FULLER. I do suggest that you terminate it if you pass the Murray-Metcalf bill and provide funds on a more general basis. I do suggest that you terminate it at the end of its first 4 years. I certainly do.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Of course if the Murray-Metcalf bill should go through, which I am sure it will not, in the present form, it still would not touch a great many areas of education where we specifically feel there was a national interest that more needed to be done and that more may involve the employment of additional people, but if it does result in better counseling and guidance service to our young people, I am not so much worried that that is a wasteful expenditure of money. I think it is those areas that have been neglected that we do have a responsibility to do a little prodding and I am proud of it. And the fact that it is causing headaches does not mean we are not interested in what the reservations are, that general statement of concern about what the pattern is is of no worry to me. Of course it is going to change the relationship and of course there is redtape in Federal programs. You have to admit that. That in itself is not against it.

Mr. FULLER. I was not referring, Mr. Frelinghuysen, to the extra personnel that would be conducting programs of counseling and guidance. I was talking about the extra people to administer and take care of the redtape connected with the administration. If you pass the Murray-Metcalf bill and give the schools that much money they will be doing a very great deal more in guidance and counseling than they can possibly be doing now even with the National Defense Education Act.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. This money would not even be available for guidance and counseling unless you got it in under the teachers' sal

aries provisions and there is no assurances that the teachers' salaries will be the ones the money will be used for. It may be used for construction.

Mr. FULLER. If you have adequate funds I do not know of any group of administrators in any State nor any State administrators who do not believe in spending more on the guidance and counseling of the very type that is being done under the National Defense Education Act of 1958.

I think that there would be a great deal more of it and I think there would be less money wasted on redtape if it were made available under the terms of H.R. 22 as amended as we suggest.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. If as you say the States have such a real interest in this it seems to me pretty deplorable that they have done so little without the Federal stimulation and it seems to me we can expect a lot more activity in that area because we have either

Mr. FULLER. I think it can be debated that they have done so little. I think they have done a great deal.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Some have and some have not. It is a spotty record.

Mr. FULLER. I would not admit the States have not done very well in that field, in their schools, before the National Defense Education Act was passed.

Mr. BAILEY. Dr. Fuller, in our debate on school construction legislation a few years ago, I called the attention of my colleagues in the House and I had a list of 184 contracts that the Federal Government had with institutions and colleges and universities and groups in this country to carry on educational programs abroad, as to what extent did we have Federal control there. A great number of the Members of the House of Representatives said to me, "Congressman, we never knew there were such programs in existence." There were 184 that I called attention to, contracts involving hundreds of millions of dollars that are being spent abroad. Members of Congress did not even know those programs have been carried on.

For instance, I reported on one program that covered the cost of building an agricultural college and nine agricultural high schools in Ethiopia, in which we not only built the school building but are paying the salaries of the faculty of the university and the nine agricultural high schools in Ethiopia and still today.

Mr. FULLER. I am not well enough acquainted with those programs to know, Mr. Chairman. I would prefer not to express on opinion on that.

Mr. BAILEY. Why argue over the point of a few controls here at home if there are no controls over that?

Mr. FULLER. I did not say there were none. I am sure there are many. But I do not know the exact extent to which there are controls over those programs. I doubt very much that is the same situation or even analogous situation, closely enough related to the problem of elementary and secondary public education to be instructive to us

here.

Mr. BAILEY. Doctor, if you will return sometime, we will set a date and have you come up. I think we will have a joint committee meeting, since some of the points you are going to raise in connection with the Defense Education Act will have to do with that education beyond the high school. So we will need both the subcommittees.

We will arrange to bring you back.

Mr. FULLER. Thank you very much. I will be glad to come at your pleasure.

Mr. BAILEY. Thank you.

Tomorrow will be the regular meeting of the Education and Labor Committee. There will be no formal hearings tomorrow, but on Friday we will meet at the regular time, and Miss Sally Butler, the General Federation of Women's Clubs, will be one of the witnesses, Edward Hollander, Americans for Democratic Action, and Miss Germaine Krettek, American Library Association, will be three witnesses on Friday.

The committee will stand adjourned until Friday morning at 10 o'clock.

(Whereupon, at 12: 10 a.m., Wednesday, February 25, 1959, the committee was adjourned, to reconvene at 10 a.m., Friday, February 27, 1959.)